Poem: March 12, 2019

Blessed and Meek

I like the Christians who aren't so sure,
the ones who don't need to be so right
that they treat their faith like an equal sign
or their approach to the world as a binary
choice in which 1 is always good and
0 is always evil, and the logic of life
is a procedure to be completed or
a program to be debugged and run.

I like the Christians whose questions
neither need nor expect answers and
whose answers take the form of
Spring days and open doorways.
I like it when they are comfortable
to wonder and suspect, to accept
that the infinite is a puzzle in which
the pleasure is not in the solving,
but in our inclusion in its breadth.

I like the Christians who are inclined
to listen in quiet spaces and who enjoy
their own patient progress toward the end,
the ones who are not hurried or convinced
they are called to herd their fellow humans
down an urgent and delineated path, who
make their way their way and pace
themselves home with their own metronome.

I like the Christians who enjoy
their service to the uncertainties of life,
who sing when it's dark as much
as they sing when it's light and who
can forgive, just forgive, without
having to correct. Who can let
others' transgressions fill less space,
who can choose to linger on them less.

I like the Christians who can look at this mess
without raising their voices in righteous anger,
without choosing the instruments that measure
and divide, without building fences, and who
instead see a world where kindness is found
where it is planted, who do not condemn,
but tend their own gentle gardens.

I like the Christians for whom life
is not merely a transaction negotiated
on their behalf, with terms and conditions
codified into hardened, infallible doctrine-
a balance sheet of debts owed or a
warning of pending litigation- but for whom
life is a daily walk on a winding path
toward the sunlight that is sometimes hidden,
but that is trusted to be there.